Petrichor
by The Cat's Paw
Summary: In the midst of their fight with Kaguya, Sakura Naruto and Sasuke find themselves hurled back to the night Naruto was born. Morning sees Sakura wake as the only survivor of Team 7. What will she do now? And can she help a grieving Hokage deal with the loss of his wife? MinaSaku, T rated.
1. Wake

**Hiya! So, I've had _no_ desire to write anything Naruto, it's been all Sailor Moon for me lately. But… I was reading a fic the other day, and it's rekindled my Naruto muse. Maybe. We'll see if it lasts. In any case, I had a whole bunch done for this idea, but then I got rid of it and redid it all just now. After this, I'm gonna go check out my other Naruto fics, see if I can't do something with them as well…**

**Anyway, in case there's someone out there who doesn't know, petrichor is what you smell when it rains. Or when someone uses a sprinkler. I _love_ that smell, it's in the top two of my favourite smells, alongside baking bread. 3 I called it this because of the fact that Sakura's element types are earth and water.**

**This idea is based kinda on all those little one shots out there, where Naruto, Sasuke and Sakura end up right at the night Naruto was born. They all have all three of them dying, but this is based on one of them surviving, and what they do afterwards. It was originally gonna be ObiSaku, but then I changed it to MinaSaku.**

**In any case, please remember that I don't own the Naruto universe, and I hope you all enjoy this. ;)**

_**Petrichor**_

**Wake**

She drifted into her awareness, her mind creeping into coherence slowly, _slowly_. Her thoughts were hazy and dim, clouded with the coma-like sleep that came with chakra exhaustion. Her head shifted slightly to the side, then back again, as she worked to wake physically as well as mentally. Fingers and toes twitched, the sound of a door opening and closing as a nurse checking on her left to inform someone that she seemed to be waking. Eyes flickered open briefly, before closing again.

Where was she? The last thing she remembered… What _was_ the last thing she could recall? Head shaking slightly, she focused on trying to remember, and slowly, _slowly_, memories began to trickle in. There was a fight… No, more than one fight. The first one was… was… against a goddess? How would _that_ even work? The last… It was against a demon.

No, not a demon. _He_ would never forgive her if she continued to call it that. It? He? A bijuu, in any case.

Some more memories came to her, including her name, which she hadn't realised she'd forgotten. Sakura. Haruno Sakura. She and two others… They'd been fighting, then there'd been a hole… That hole had led to a different battleground, one that was different in so many ways, yet was connected to the other one in yet others. Her team mates… Uzumaki Naruto. Uchiha Sasuke. They were… they were…

She gasped, eyes wide, jolting up into a sitting position.

Naruto! Sasuke! Where were they? Sakura's eyes darted around the room, noting the bareness, the sterility of the space. A hospital room, her mind supplied her. She was in a hospital. Konoha's hospital, judging by the design of the room, the _feel_ of the chakra running through the place. That feeling had always soothed her before. Now, it irritated the hell out of her. But why? …Ah. Because the wards used were done by different people than she was used to. Of course.

Sakura pushed the sheet off, swinging her legs over to the side of the bed. She wiggled her toes, staring down at her feet. There was still feeling in them. She raised a leg up, one at a time. No muscle atrophy, so it wasn't _too _long that she's been in here. Good. Tentatively she slid off the bed, landing softly and solidly on her feet. For all of two seconds before her legs buckled and she grasped desperately at the bed in order not to tumble to the ground.

Why did…? Ah, a weakness in the joints, easily fixed, so she did so. Once it was done Sakura stood easily, if a little shakily, on her own two legs at last. But then she sat back on the bed, and thought. She thought and thought, until she could remember what happened…

Otsutsuki Kaguya. She, Naruto, and Sasuke were fighting her. Kakashi and Obito were off to one side. She… Sakura remembered punching that bitch in the face, then a bright light, blackness, another bright light, and then… They were in front of… Kurama.

Naruto'd started freaking out at the sight, going on about how was this possible? And where were his parents? Sasuke had immediately honed in on one spot, locating someone… Obito. Then he'd told Naruto he was going to deal with him, before taking off. Naruto'd yelled and called him a bastard, before asking Sakura to help him find his parents. They'd found them fighting off Kurama. Naruto'd eagerly joined in the fray, briefly startling his parents. Naruto was, after all, still 'lit up' in his partnership with Kurama.

The fighting had been intense, but eventually Kushina had managed to tie Kurama down with her chains. The Yondaime had wanted to start the shiki fujin, but Naruto had stopped him. There'd been arguing, but eventually, the Hokage had started it. A heavily wounded Sasuke had shown up shortly after, an equally injured Obito slung over his shoulder. Sakura had been checking over Kushina when he arrived, and they were all distracted at his appearance. Minato and Kushina especially at the sight of Sasuke's burden.

Kurama had taken the opportunity to attack.

A giant claw had headed straight for where Sakura and Kushina were. Minato had rushed to his wife, Naruto had rushed to Sakura, but in the end, neither of them got there in time. Sasuke had, however. He pushed Sakura out of the way, ending up getting… getting…

Sakura released a sob, remembering the look in Sasuke's eyes. He'd looked so _surprised_ by his actions. Did this mean that he'd… that he'd…? She clasped her hand to her mouth as she grieved.

Kushina had also… Naruto had screamed in denial, Minato had frozen for a moment, before continuing forward to his wife. Sakura had raised a hand to Sasuke's face, instinctively glowing green, but even as she'd stared at him, and he at her, the light had disappeared from his eyes. She closed her eyes as a fresh wave of grief overwhelmed her.

It was chaos after that. Naruto had _insisted_ that _he_ be the one to seal Kurama. Even though the Hokage had wanted to join his wife, Naruto had told him that he _needed_ to be there for his son. So Minato had allowed it, walking him through it, even as Sakura had yelled at him to stop being such an idiot. Kurama's last attack had taken her then, and Sakura, already low on chakra from fighting a war, a goddess, and now a bijuu, had collapsed…

And that was the last thing she remembered.

Sakura was overwhelmed in her grief. Sasuke, and undoubtedly Naruto, were gone. Dead. Never coming back. She was here, in the past, all on her own. What was she supposed to do? She hugged her arms close to her, losing herself in her tears, wallowing in her pain. But she couldn't stay here and cry forever. If only for the fact that the door opened and four people walked in. One of them gasped and came over to her, sitting next to her and wrapping an arm around her. Cool, soothing chakra was sent to her, and slowly Sakura calmed.

She wiped away her tears and looked up. Before her were an ANBU, the Hokage, and a medic. Next to her, still rubbing her back soothingly, was a nurse. She breathed as deeply as she could, trying to catch her breath so that she could speak. She looked into the Hokage's eyes, and saw her own grief mirrored there. And fatigue. He was _tired_, she could tell.

"H-Hokage-sama," she managed to choke out.

"Sakura-san," he returned, and with that simple statement, Sakura understood why her memories had initially been jumbled.

Someone had used a mind-scan on her. A Yamanaka? Ibiki? Maybe… Inoichi? Either way, they would probably still have a lot of questions for her, and as she stared at Namikaze Minato, she knew that she was in for a _long_ debriefing.

**So what did you think? Review please! :)**


	2. Speak

**Next chapter! :)**

**Disclaimer that I don't own the Naruto 'verse and all it contains goes here.**

_**Speak**_

Sakura watched dispassionately as the medic-nin and the nurse left, the former having completed a quick check-up on her, before nodding to the Hokage and leaving him, the ANBU, and Sakura alone. The door shut, she stared at it in an almost zombie-like state, her mind and emotions still numb from her tumultuous revelations. It took Minato a few tries to get her attention, but eventually she paid attention when he spoke.

"Why did you come here?"

Sakura's gaze fluttered slowly to his. "It was an accident," she eventually said, her voice quiet.

Minato exhaled deeply, eyeing her thoughtfully, before he nodded. "I had a Yamanaka scan you," he told her, confirming her thought from before. "It was only a basic scan, so I need you to give me details, explain what he _did_ see. For instance, why you're a shinobi of Konoha, yet you aren't on the official register. As well as the fact that one of your… team mates… is an Uchiha, yet there aren't any of that clan unaccounted for. As for your other team mate…"

Sakura looked away from him then, tears welling in her eyes briefly before she blinked them away. "My name is Haruno Sakura," she said woodenly. "Registration number, 012601. Rank, chuunin. I graduated at the age of twelve, alongside my classmates, in the twelfth year of the second reign of the Sandaime Hokage."

That got a reaction. In the corner of her eye, Sakura saw Minato stiffen slightly, before he motioned for her to continue after she'd paused too long.

"I was placed on a team with the highest ranking graduate, Uchiha Sasuke, and the lowest scoring graduate, Uzumaki Naruto," she said, ignoring how the man before her utterly froze at Naruto's name. "We were placed under the tutelage of a jounin sensei, one Hatake Kakashi."

There was silence, and it dragged on for quite a bit, the uncomfortableness of it not fazing the ANBU in the room in the slightest, of course. Finally, Minato stated, "Kakashi didn't come back with you."

Sakura shook her head. "He wasn't near us when it happened," she said. "I… I'm not even sure what happened, or _how_… Do you… Can you tell me what it was that Yamanaka-san saw? How much?"

Minato levelled a stare at her a moment, before he sighed. "He saw your name, your rank and affiliation," was his reply, "and he also saw you fighting a white haired woman. He saw a lot of jumbled images that he figured are from your childhood, as well as some more recent. For you, that is. And you and your team fighting Orochimaru-sama? Though he wasn't sure why."

Sakura closed her eyes briefly, remembering the incredibly one sided fight in the Forest of Death. "Orochimaru defected from Konoha after Sandaime-sama discovered he was performing unethical experiments, mostly on 'forgotten' Konoha citizens."

_Now_ there was a visible reaction from the ANBU, even if it was only a slight shift in the position he was standing in. From Minato, there was a sense of anger and disbelief, like it was something unthinkable. But then his posture relaxed slightly as he seemed to put it aside for the moment.

"I think you're going to need to write up a full report," he said. "Everything you know, leaving nothing out."

Sakura only nodded.

There was silence again, then she asked, "Can I ask… Where they are? Sasuke and Naruto, I mean."

A beat, then Minato said, "In a secure location, where they won't be disturbed just yet. I… I'm honestly not sure what to do with their… er, what to do with them."

"A-and, Obito…?"

Minato's eyes simultaneously hardened and drooped in grief. "Ah, yes, Obito," he said a little darkly. "He's in secure lock-up, with his chakra sealed and his eyes… _eye…_ also sealed. There are only a few who know about him, just as there are only a few who really know about you, also. What I can't understand is why…? _Why_ did he attack Konoha?"

"From what I heard before we came back," Sakura said, "he was captured and brainwashed by Uchiha Madara, who wasn't dead at the time. I _think_ he is by now, though. Obito saw someone he loved die, and apparently that tipped him over into madness."

"Rin," Minato breathed.

"I think that's who it was," Sakura agreed. "I heard Obito mention, in my time, something about how Madara caused it? I think. I figure that he must have arranged it somehow, to get Obito fully on his side."

"And coming here? Attacking Konoha and Kushina?"

"The Kyuubi," Sakura said. "Gathering the bijuu was one of the goals that Obito and Zetsu had."

A sharp intake of breath. "To what end?"

"To reconstruct the juubi, and bring a farce of peace to the world," Sakura said. "Though in the end, both Madara and Obito were misled by Zetsu, who was doing all this to revive Otsutsuki Kaguya."

"Who is…?" Minato started to say, then sighed. "Never mind. Perhaps I should just wait to read your report on this. In the mean time, what do I need to know, _now_, to keep the village safe? What's the most important thing to worry about?"

Sakura thought a moment. "There's Zetsu," she said. "But an ordinary sensor can't detect him, and he can infiltrate even the most secure locations. Then there's Orochimaru, as I mentioned. Also, Shimura Danzou, the village elder. You need to look into his activities, because he's running a secret militant organisation as his own personal army."

Minato nodded. "I'll look into it," he said. "In the meantime, you'll be staying here, until I figure out what to do with you. An ANBU will be outside your door at all times. If you need anything, let him know."

He left then, the ANBU following, and Sakura was left on her own.

OoOoO

After leaving Sakura in her hospital room, and the ANBU who'd accompanied him outside her door, Minato headed straight to T&I, bypassing the main reception, going straight to Inoichi's office. Once there, he utilised a sealed door that only he, Inoichi, and Ibiki could access, revealing a set of stairs that led downwards. At the end of the stairs was a long corridor, leading directly under the Hokage Tower.

Once he reached his destination, he found Ibiki going over some seals that hovered over a sleeping figure. The man briefly grunted at his Hokage's entrance, far too engrossed in his work to really greet him. Inoichi on the other hand…

"Well?" the Yamanaka asked without preamble. "How did it go? Did she tell you the truth?"

"She did," Minato said. "I told her you didn't see much, let her fill in the blanks. She's genuine, though grieving also. She's… _mourning_ them."

Inoichi nodded solemnly in understanding at that, remembering what he'd seen in Sakura's memories. He changed the subject. "How's little Naruto doing?" he asked.

Minato smiled wanly. "He's fine," he replied. "I'll be picking him up after we're done here."

Ibiki stepped back then, obviously finished with what he was doing. "Hokage-sama," he properly greeted now. "Are you ready?"

Minato stared down at Obito's sleeping form, pushing aside all the emotions swirling inside of him. "Wake him," he said, mentally preparing himself for the interrogation to come.

**So what did you think? Review please! :)**


	3. Chapter 3

Hi!

After thinking about this for awhile, and on the advice of a fellow fanfiction writer (aka my sister) this update is to inform you that this story has now moved over to my new profile, thatsnotmyname32.

I thank you all for your support here, and hope that you will continue to do so at the new profile.

Thank you. :)


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